Discovery Institute decries Cat Beard Contest

I really don’t pay much attention to David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute (DI), for he writes the usual creationist pap about me ad infinitum, and it gets boring. (He also lacks a sense of humor.) I guess I should be flattered, though, that the DI sees me as someone who stands in the way of their foisting intelligent design and God on the world. Yes, God, for if you look up Klinghoffer’s potted biography at the DI, you find this (the title of the first book listed is hilarious):

David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle and a contributor to Evolution News & Views. He is the author most recently of How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative (Random House, 2008). His previous books are Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History (Doubleday, 2005), The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism (Doubleday, 2003) and the spiritual memoir The Lord Will Gather Me In (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1998), a National Jewish Book Award finalist. His forthcoming book is Shattered Tablets: What the Ten Commandments Reveal about American Culture and Its Discontents (Doubleday, 2006). A former literary editor of National Review magazine, Klinghoffer has written articles and reviews for the Los Angles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications.

I wonder how well those books sell? At any rate, this belies the pretense that there’s no religious agenda behind ID. I suppose it’s pure coincidence that all the big honchos of the DI (with the possible exception of the unbearably pompous David Berlinski) are hyper-religious. According to Wikipedia, Klinghoffer is an Orthodox Jew. This pains me, as it always does when I discover that my fellow Jews can be just as ridiculous as fundamentalist Christians.

At any rate, Klinghoffer is now churning out roughly one piece a day, trying to cast Ball State University professor Eric Hedin as a martyr for ID, and attacking me for my relentless “bullying” of Hedin. Klinghoffer’s latest piece at Evolution News & Views is a repeat of all the others, accusing me of trying to get Hedin fired—that’s a lie, of course, but the DIers are good at lying for God—and bullying the poor man. There’s even a petition to Free Hedin.

This kind of anti-Coyneian invective is fine with me: I’d be doing something wrong if I didn’t get it, and I expect such tactics from the DI. But Klinghoffer crossed the line this time—he dissed my cats! (My emphasis below):

Maybe the reason has something to do with the fact that Coyne is not a nobody (though he is an ignoramus on anything to do with the intelligent design controversy). People are overly impressed by his university affiliations. And he keeps banging away at the issue on his blog, trying to put Hedin out of a job.

Make no mistake, that will be the ultimate result if Coyne gets his way.[JAC: No it won’t. Klinghoffer is an idiot.] While Jerry Coyne sits comfortably in Chicago, secure in his employment as he snaps photos of his own boots and the meals he eats and posts endless videos of cute cats, Hedin is surely in fear for the future of his career. (You don’t believe me about Coyne’s popular blog, Why Evolution Is True? Go over there periodically and see. He is currently administering a contest for readers who photograph themselves with a cat under their nose so it looks like a beard. Really!)

Yes, really! You can criticize my anticreationism all you want, but hands off the cats! At least cat beards provide some amusement for the readers, unlike the endless and tedious lies churned out by Klinghoffer and his DI confrères. And they don’t set back science, as Klinghoffer aims to do.

But what I want to say to Klinghoffer (besides requesting that he stop lying about me wanting Hedin fired) is this: if you’re so fond of “teaching the controversy”, why do you, and every other person who writes for Evolution News & Views, refuse to allow comments on your site? I note that Paul Nelson, a young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute Fellow, posted yesterday on my site. I then invited Nelson to present his evidence that the earth really is only a few thousand years old. He hasn’t responded.

71 Comments

Argumentum ad hominem, a common charateristic of creationists and other pseudo-scientists.

However, I would rather speak about the religous-political agenda behind ID. Since all anti-evolution propaganda is in fact about the threat posed by modern science for the political power of religious groups.

I don’t know if you’ve followed Klinghoffer for very long but he is a nasty person. For awhile most of his posts were about how Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust. He is a particularly vicious idiot.

It isn’t really a matter of having issues with cat videos, manly footwear or photo contests per se, it’s Klinghoffer’s complete lack of pro-IDiocy argument, or any other means of legitimate debate. The DI has no theory, does no actual research, publishes no papers, and in fact is unable even to formulate any kind of testable hypothesis.

But they still feel that they have to confront ‘Darwinism’ somehow, and Jerry, having written a masterwork on evolutionary theory, is a most visible target. So they periodically roll out rabid hamster David Klinghoffer to fling the poo, because ad hominem’s the only kind of ‘argument’ they have in their pathetic arsenal.

These social reactionaries are mentally ill. While, yes, I have laughed at the antics or something said by a mentally ill person in the past, I do not feel that mental illness needs to be described as anything (e.g.”pathetic”) except what it is:

Total lack of humor is a characteristic of creationists. Their “brains” are so frantic trying to hold together their fantasy world that their humorocampus is totally suppressed.

After the Kitzmiller trial, Dembski produced a remarkable Jib-Jab-esque animation of the prime players, including Judge Jones, complete with fart noises. Dembski, himself, according to legend, provided the voice-over. It might have been marginally funny to a 5th Grader and even the creationists soon tired of it. The voice-over was pulled in Version 2.

This pains me, as it always does when I discover that my fellow Jews can be just as ridiculous as fundamentalist Christians.

They’re human, Jerry. And they’re going to be human. And being Jewish doesn’t give you an exemption from any social ill — racism, criminality, wonky religious beliefs, feet of clay or any thing else — that humans suffer from.

Which, for some reason, so many people can’t see as they’ve mythologized the entire ethnic group/sub-culture. As if it’s all Fiddler on the Roof and any moment now Tevye is going to start singing about tradition and the only role Jews can have (as a people) on this world is ‘victim.’

Humans, but mentally-ill humans. Their social context allows them to escape treatment (the sanctimonious church).

Looking at ‘hoarders’ is a very parallel view of this type of mental illness in action. You go into a hoarder’s house, stacked to the ceiling with newspapers, and you say, “Gee, these newspapers are eight years old. What do you say, we just toss them, since the news in them is old.”

“Oh, no!” sez the hoarder, “I believe there is some important information in that particular paper that I’ve been saving for some time…”

Or, some other ‘reasonable’ answer like that. The fact is, hoarders and these social reactionaries refuse to accept normal reasoning. But they do it with words that sound “reasonable”.

Further evidence that the deeply religious are devoid of humour. He must be getting desperate if he has to complain about this stuff. I think it fitting to paste the definition of the MacPherson clan motto since it is to do with cat clans…this will probably annoy Klinghoffer more: Touch not the cat bot a glove & the Wikipedia description:

‘Bot’ means without. The ‘glove’ of a wildcat is the pad. If the cat is ‘ungloved’, its claws are unsheathed. The motto serves as a warning that one should beware when the wildcat’s claws are ‘without a glove’. It is a reference to the historically violent nature of the clan and serves as a metaphorical warning to other clans that they should think twice before interfering with MacPherson business.

I had always thought that the meaning was simply that you should not touch the cat (ie a MacPherson) without wearing a glove, to protect yourself. I like your more subtle version, using the old sense of “without” meaning “outside” or “outwith”.

Excuse me, not just MacPhersons, but the whole Clan Chatten:
Mackintosh
MacGillivray
MacBean
Shaw
MacThomas
Macleans of Dochgarroch
Macpherson
Farquharson
Davidson
MacPhail
MacQueens of Strathdearn
MacIntyres in Badenoch
– according to the Clan Chatten Association website.
(My mother was a MacBean and we are inordinately proud of our ancestor Gillies, reputed to have killed 13 Sassenachs defending a breach of a wall at Culloden, but since only 95 Sassenachs were killed altogether, that’s an inordinate number.)

The MacBean motto is “Touch not a catt bot a targe (shield)” and it is we who must not lack the targe, not the catt. (MacBean rhymes with bane, not the vegetable. Some have capitulated on the pronunciation, others on the spelling but we haven’t backed down.) John Bean took our tartan (US: plaid) to the moon.

“While Jerry Coyne sits comfortably in Chicago, secure in his employment as he snaps photos of his own boots and the meals he eats and posts endless videos of cute cats, Hedin is surely in fear for the future of his career.”
____

Fundamentalist leaders psychologically manipulate their gullible rank and file by hiding their own rabid and rancid intellectual dishonesty–well outright lying in this case as Jerry does not want Hedin fired–behind maudlin shrieks of imagined persecution.

I need to stay in a sauna for a few hours while scrubbing myself with a scouring pad before I can once again feel clean. What slime Klinghoffer is.

First off, Hedin should be ridden out of town on a rail. (figuratively, not literally)

Secondly, it is a bit cowardly to sling insults at someone, when you run a site that doesn’t allow commenting. I have seen chickens with more guts than that.

Lastly, I cant imagine how scrunched up someone’s drawers must be, to get riled up over a cat beard contest. I believe the correlation of ones puffed up sense of importance compares nicely with a complete lack of humor. We need a chart for that.

What you photograph is none of Mr. Klinghoffer’s business. It’s your website, not his. His critical comments are classic envy, he wishes he had the loyal following that you have and he wishes he didn’t have to make stuff up to support his viewpoints.

This whole controversy could be easily solved a simple statement from hedin.

“yes I can see why Jerry and others may think that the course is unfair and bias. I will modify the syllabus for next year to include some notable books with a naturalistic view and I will be more mindful to not include books that make misleading arguments. So as not to provide that view.”

No admission of guilt, no controversy,

Quick, simple and done with a minimal effort. Everyone is happy.

This could have been over and done with 3 weeks ago. Right now he’s just fanning the flames.

Perhaps I’m on about my own terminology that others will find unsatisfactory, but as I sit here and muse about it, I find “social reactionary” as a very useful description. Especially, if you add the descriptor “and social reactionaries are mentally-ill”.

We all have our mental shortcomings. But once it is affecting others or yourself (schizophrenia, hoarding) one falls into the category (IMO) that the evidence reveals one to be “mentally-ill”. Mental illness doesn’t have to be a perjorative…heck, I’d categorize someone with Alzheimer’s Disease as mentally ill. I’d say both Hitler and Stalin were social reactionaries, and mentally ill, yet led important powerful countries. It doesn’t mean you cannot function. It means that, socially, you are odds with normal human beings. You aspire to the impossible, best illustrated by the tea-party phrase “I want my country back!”

People can disagree, such as in the case of defining ‘academic freedom’ at Ball State, and yet all can be graded ‘normal human being’ within this discussion. But to cling to ideas such as a “young earth”, which was the idea that 99% of Western Europe took as true in 1500, yet now, 90% have switched after absorbing reasonable evidence….why should the 10% refusing to alter their thinking be described as anything but ‘social reactionaries, and mentally ill.’
??????

The title of Klinghoffer’s book How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative reminds me of a vaguely-remembered line from The Young Ones where someone told Rick-with-a-silent-P that it was God>/i> who had decreed something or another, and Rick replied, “Right! I knew it was a Tory!”

Nice to see that Klinghoffer’s views are up there with one of the more memorable tossers from TV sitcom history!